arrived starting shortly after midnight to try to evacuate some people from their apartments, from their brown stones here, people who just thought they couldn't really stay in their homes too much longer. not life threatening situations necessarily, but at least some discomfort there and people just not wanting to be in the homes with the water like this. now, we have to say now that the water is receding. it is receding pretty drastically over the last hour. there is a stretch of dry street there behind me. that was not there an hour ago. a lot of cars completely -- not completely but submerged up to the tire range there. now some of the water receding. a lot of that is due to the efforts of gentlemen like this. this is a volunteer from the neighborhood here. he and a couple of other guys have come out here on the corners here, clearing out storm drains. and i think that's responsible for a lot of the water reseating. city workers doing what they can to siphon this out. this is a surge from the hudson river that came up from the storm drain, when the storm came, the water came into the drain